Earthbound and Final Fantasy 3. It fucking hurts. Super Mario World is one of the best goddamn platformers ever made, but Final Fantasy 3 is my absolute favorite game in its entire series, while I can't say the same for World. As much as I absolutely love Zelda games, Zelda has never been my personal top-of-everything sort of series. A Link to the Past is an unquestionable masterpiece of game design. But a single piece of music from Earthbound unleashed at exactly the right time in Mother 3 made me cry like an idiot. Earthbound is a game that has only come to mean more to me year after year, and every time I think about it or revisit it, it's with a greater fondness.

I love Super Mario World and played the hell out of it but it's not as better-than Super Mario 3 and 64 as A Link to the Past is just the best game in the series. I feel like Super Mario World could still theoretically match up against FF and EB, but this round definitely feels like a Nintendo 1st party bracket and an RPG bracket, so...

I love FF6 and Earthbound pretty much equally but I think this one has to go to FF6. The games both have about the same ratio of well-executed things to problems, but in virtually every category FF6 reaches farther. More detailed characters, plot, battle system (can someone mod in Brentai's idea of every character ONLY has their special battle command and not Fight?). Sorry, Ness. I will still PK Fire spam with you in Smash Bros.

If it had been up to me, I'd have advanced LttP and Earthbound. LttP for the obvious, and Earthbound over FF3 because I consider FF2 the overall strongest game of the FF series. I don't think FF3 is worse than Earthbound, though, and my choice would have been made purely to put more variety on the poll.

Had FF2 been previously eliminated, I probably would have killed myself to avoid picking.

Terranigma is sadly not better than any of the games in the last round (despite how much I will support the Enix trilogy), but it's certainly better than Killer Instinct and Sim Ant. Mega Man X is almost like a textbook case for how you successfully reboot a franchise.

I agree that Ogre Battle is a no-brainer, voted on by those with NO-BRAINS! Ha ha ha, you've been jested!

Illusion of Gaia and Chrono Trigger for me. I madly respect Ogre Battle, but don't enjoy it as much as a game. Zombies Ate Our Neighbors is super cool, but doesn't hold water against the other three in our JRPG overlord forum base.